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Four years ago, when my partner and I bought our first condo, we decided not to spoil our new space with the old, worn-out Ikea futon we had in our rental apartment. We were both happy to leave the couch on the curbside when we moved, but it was a full four years before we agreed on the style and budget for the replacement. He likes Danish-made, authentic mid-century-modern furniture, whereas I like affordable.

We didn’t actively search the whole time; no relationship needs that kind of aggravation. In fact, in most of our sofa-free days (during which we still had chairs – in case it looks like we spent years lolling haplessly on the floor), we were similar to the 15 per cent of Americans who avoid visiting furniture stores with their other half because they know that they’re more likely to come home frustrated with each other than toting new decor,

Zac Posen pays extreme attention to detail. I know this to be a fact. Not from the fashion designs which brought him fame. The 38-year old New Yorker hand-crafts clothing for beautiful women — Uma Thurman, Claire Danes — to grab best-dressed headlines at the Met Gala and the Oscars. Whereas I’m a not terribly fashionable man.

Instead, I gleaned his commitment to precision when I tried to follow the chocolate chip cookies from his debut recipe book, Cooking with Zac. The first indication was that I had to brown the butter in a pan until it looked like “deep mahogany with a hazelnut scent,” he writes — a necessary extra step because “with so many cookies in the world, it’s the fine touches that count.” The second indication was that I had to hand-press the chips into the top of the dough to achieve “a polished and professional look.” Clearly, this is not a recipe for a lazy baker.

On first impression, the new restaurant Quetzal, a high-end Mexican eatery in Toronto, seems conspicuously lacking in Latin American flair. The long, linear and distinctly low-ceilinged space is composed of 12 modular bays, each about two metres wide, that create alcoves for seating – plus a striking canopy over the bar-slash-kitchen. The palette has a minimalist, art gallery vibe: The bays are crafted from fibreglass-reinforced gypsum and the bar is a geometric jigsaw of lightweight Ductal concrete and Canadian maple.

The local wood species, also used for the floor and banquettes, has been leftblond except for the dark-stained dining surfaces, which include a trio of two-person tables that ingeniously cantilever from the bar. “It’s our most restrained space so far,” says Pooya Baktash, a co-founder with Alex Josephson of the Toronto firm Partisans and the principal who oversaw the design. “But we still found a way to be expressive.”

Le rocher très percé at the International Garden Festival. Photo by Martin Bond

Recently, before I made a 12-hour drive east from Toronto to Grand-Métis, Que., I was warned by several people that cell signal would be scarce. The tiny village – population 237 – sits at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and has many amenities for summer tourists, including clapboard cottages and quaint inns along the coast (the Centre d’art Marcel Gagnon is a nice auberge). But a surfeit of cell towers isn’t one of them.

Rather than being a point of frustration, though, the lack of digital connectivity is something that the area’s main attraction, the enchanting Reford Gardens, seems to be revelling in. There is no WiFi in the park (whose French name is the Jardins de Métis), all the better to appreciate the groves of purple lilacs and fields of blue poppies.

Earl Charles Spencer, Princess Diana’s baby brother and the father of royal fan-favourite Lady Kitty Spencer, is a busy man. He just became a great-uncle to Prince Louis, had a golden ticket to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding and, one week later, was at Toronto’s Kennedy Galleries to unveil a new set of furniture for the Living History collection based on antiques from Althorp Estate, where he and Diana lived as children. Here, he talks about being raised in a Downton Abbey-esque manse, and updating heirloom furniture for modern bums.

Growing up at Althorp as a young boy, were there any rules about playing on the furniture?Yes, my grandfather was a formidable figure. He was relic of the pre-First World World era, and he cared more about the house than people. He would give very strict lectures. We basically couldn’t touch anything. It was quite scary to be honest. But when I took over as a young man, at 27, I let my children have the run of the place. Of course I didn’t let my kids play with porcelain or things that would break. But actually, for the house, I think it is better if it is enjoyed as a home.

Glitterboy, the ongoing photo series by 20-year-old artist Quil Lemons, features portraits of young, Black men with metallic, sparkly flecks on their cheeks and foreheads. All shot against soft pink backdrops, the subjects express a range of moods and feelings. One named Jordun smiles from ear to ear, while Harley gazes coyly and Myles stares starkly at the viewer, as if to ask the question: why are you looking at me just because I’m wearing cosmetics?

The answer to that has been jarringly mixed. Lemons, who often wears glitter on his own cheeks (“it’s cool when you see it in the sun,” he says), first started posting images of Glitterboy on his Twitter and Instagram accounts in 2017. Since then, the reception has ranged from love — Vogue, Allure and i-D have all given glowing reviews — to anger.

Like many people in their late 20s and early 30s, Heather Payne and her husband, Shawn Konopinsky, are bright, ambitious and successful – but they don’t own the place where they live with their one-year-old baby. Instead, they own a cottage.

For the past five years, they have rented their apartment in the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale, joining the 50 per cent of millennials who are still renting their homes by age 30, according to the 2016 census data, compared with the 45 per cent of boomers who hadn’t bought their place by the same age.